Mike Massimino was on the crew of STS-125, the final mission to the Hubble Space Telescope—and the last chance to fix one of the greatest scientific instruments ever built.
NASA trains astronauts for a maximum of seven hours of spacewalking, but on May 17, 2009, astronaut Mike Massimino was outside the space shuttle Atlantis for over eight hours. A power source within the telescope’s spectrograph had short-circuited, but the spectrograph was not designed to be repaired in space. One of the challenges? It was behind a cover plate held tight by 111 tiny screws.
Massimino had logged hundreds of hours in NASA’s Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory preparing for this task, training to remove tiny screws while wearing bulky space gloves and a heavy suit. Nobody expected the four large screws on the panel’s handrail to pose a problem. But as he worked, the drill stripped the final screw.
He waited in space, 350 miles above the planet, for a strategy from NASA engineers on the ground. They determined that Massimino needed to break off the handrail using brute force, and they explained the risks: floating debris might damage his spacesuit or the telescope. Fellow crew member Andrew Feustel advised him to tape the handrail to keep parts from flying loose. Then Massimino ripped it off.
He proceeded to install new equipment deep inside the telescope, without harm. The spectrograph, whose functions include looking at the motion of stars around black holes, resumed its work. Rolling with the punches and thinking on their feet (or in Massimino’s case, off his feet) ensured that hundreds of astrophysicists could continue their work for years to come.
Like this story? Then you’ll love The Martian. Watch it on the big screen for free on August 1, during the Museum’s Space & Science Festival.
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